Month: January 2018

Ever wished you could receive notifications on all of your trades automatically? Well, you already could with the CryptoSight add-on to Gunbot, or with Mehtadone’s free CryptoGramBot. But now, from Gunbot 8.0.3 onwards, this option is native to each release, no longer requiring additional third party resources. In 5 minutes, we’re going to power up …

GBULIVE Topics for this week: Gunbot 8.0.3 How to calculate profits by hand from exchange downloads Q&A – Attendees choose GBU BACHELORS and MASTERS only. Do not share this link with anyone. Seats for GBULIVE are limited. Be sure to sign in with your GBU or Slack username for proper identification. Anyone on the web …

PIVX as a coin will probably go up in value for a little bit, after the initial “listing depression” and then get a major boost. You might want to add it to your Gunbot on your favorite exchange(s) wherever it’s supported, which currently includes Bittrex and Cryptopia… It’s also available on a few non-Gunbot Exchanges like CoinExchange, LiveCoin, Upbit, and a few others.

If you already own Gunbot, but don’t have a license for Binance exchange, consider adding this exchange to your Gunbot licenses. GBU is an authorized seller of Gunbot, so you can upgrade to the ALL Exchange license.

If you don’t own Gunbot, you probably should consider botting as a way to drastically improve your profits in crypto. GBU is an authorized seller, so what are you waiting for? Visit us in https://gunbotuniversity.com/shop . One of the bests deals around is the Master Gunbot Pack – you get Gunbot, all Exchanges, Plus GBU hosts your VPS (cloud server) for you for two months, sets everything up, installs everything, and then performs 2hrs of training and white glove handing over of the bot to you, with everything working and profitable. Not only that, but you get two months of Master membership at GBU. Master membership can continue for around $250/month after the first two months, and includes VPS for up to six exchanges and at least 2 hours of dedicated one on one training and elite access to our GBU facilities.

GBU takes more than just bitcoin for payment — avoid the high fees by using Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, or DASH when you check out. We even take Paypal (manually) if you want to pay that way. We just need to add a little extra for processing, and it’s not on the website (yet), so just send a direct message to Professor CryptoWally in the Slack or use our feedback form if you want to use Paypal.

PIVX, the 102nd coin listed on Binance, has a minimum price of 0.0000001 BTC order value of 0.002 BTC (ref: Binance Trading Rules)

Private Instant Verified Transaction, PIVX, is a privacy-focused decentralized open source cryptocurrency launched in Feb 1 2016 under the name of Darknet (DNET), before it was professionally re-branded to PIVX. The initial Proof of Work (PoW) distribution phase ended August 2016 when DNET transitioned to the current Proof
of Stake (PoS) phase.

PIVX runs on Blackcoin PoS 2.0 protocol and is based on Bitcoin core 0.10.x code base. It utilizes a network of masternodes for an openly visible decentralized governance and increased transaction privacy.

The main goal of PIVX is to achieve near instant private transactions and a governance that helps sustain the network for the benefit of all of the users involved.

If you’re crypto-serious about your rags to riches story with Gunbot, you should definitely know the core principle of operating with it. And no, it’s not about the perfect settings, it’s not about tweaking strategies, and it’s not about the amount you’re willing to invest. It’s not about bullish markets, neither it is about bearish …

GBULIVE Topics for this week: Version 7.0.2 GB install – GUI and VPS Q&A – Attendees choose GBU BACHELORS and MASTERS only. Do not share this link with anyone. Seats for GBULIVE are limited. Be sure to sign in with your GBU or Slack username for proper identification. Anyone on the web meeting that is …

GBULIVE Topics for this week: tsslstepgain review Q&A – Attendees choose GBU BACHELORS and MASTERS only. Do not share this link with anyone. Seats for GBULIVE are limited. Be sure to sign in with your GBU or Slack username for proper identification. Anyone on the web meeting that is not signed in with their GBU …

1) Summarizing, what do I need to know? a) These special settings were prepared for beginners (slower action, but more conservative settings – safety is the focus here) and for more experienced users (faster action, with appropriate settings – profit is the focus here). The ones that you can find in this article are meant …

1) Summarizing, what do I need to know? a) These special settings were prepared for beginners (slower action, but more conservative settings – safety is the focus here) and for more experienced users (faster action, with appropriate settings – profit is the focus here). The ones that you can find in this article are meant …

INS as a coin will probably go up in value for a little bit, after the initial “listing depression” and then get a major boost. You might want to add it to your Gunbot on your favorite exchange(s) wherever it’s supported, which currently is only Bittrex… It’s currently also listed on EtherDelta and KuCoin

If you already own Gunbot, but don’t have a license for Binance exchange, consider adding this exchange to your Gunbot licenses. GBU is an authorized seller of Gunbot, so you can upgrade to the ALL Exchange license.

If you don’t own Gunbot, you probably should consider botting as a way to drastically improve your profits in crypto. GBU is an authorized seller, so what are you waiting for? Visit us in https://gunbotuniversity.com/shop .

GBU takes more than just bitcoin for payment — avoid the high fees by using Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, or DASH when you check out. We even take Paypal (manually) if you want to pay that way. We just need to add a little extra for processing, and it’s not on the website (yet), so just send a direct message to Professor CryptoWally in the Slack or use our feedback form if you want to use Paypal.

Interestingly, unlike other coins we’ve covered on GBU, this coin was only recently listed on CoinMarketCap’s website in the last few days, so there really wasn’t a lot of history on the site. So the pump wasn’t the normal huge hockey stick, but it was still a large enough pump:

If you take a look at the items marked in the chart by GBU above:

Even with “all” selected, it only goes back a few days

Jan 13th showed only a little volatility

Jan 14th showed some interest

But Jan 15th shows the BIG spike, which is when Binance listed it, and all the HODLers from the ICO (initial price: $2.57) were quick to sell off their coins.. presumably.

The peak price hit near $12 and 86k sats before settling down for some horizontal action.

This is what makes us think it’s probably a good time to add it to Gunbot since there’s a spike in the past.

INS is the first global decentralized ecosystem that will enable consumers to buy groceries directly from manufacturers conveniently and at lower prices.

INS will facilitate the direct interaction between consumers and manufacturers. Bypassing retailers and wholesalers means a more personalized and transparent grocery shopping experience at lower prices. Сonsumers will be able to decide which brands they want and which goods they need.

INS will enable manufacturers to create bespoke marketing programs to promote their goods directly to consumers. These programs run on smart contracts and are powered by the INS token as a means of reward. It is similar to a miles-based reward programs of many airlines, but more advanced, cheaper to run and personalized thanks to the smart contracts behind them.

This is the Part III of the three-part article ‘The Best Exchange of Them All’, where we show you how choosing the right exchange can have an impact of up to 50% on your Return on Investment. You haven’t done so yet, click here to read the Part II of this article. 3) So, what …

This is the Part II of the three-part article ‘The Best Exchange of Them All’, where we show you how choosing the right exchange can have an impact of up to 50% on your Return on Investment. You haven’t done so yet, click here to read the Part I of this article. c) Number of …

Gunbot started out over one year ago as a ‘money printing machine’ exclusively working with Poloniex and Kraken. From that moment onwards, Gunbot was able to triple that initial offer. Now, Poloniex, Kraken, Bittrex, Bitfinex, Cryptopia and Binance are all fully able and working, which begs the question: which one is the right one for …

RLC as a coin will probably go up in value for a little bit, after the initial “listing depression” and then get a major boost. If you’re not botting it already, add it to your Gunbot on your favorite exchange(s) wherever it’s supported, which includes Bittrex… If you were already botting it, you probably saw a nice boost today.

If you already own Gunbot, but don’t have a license for Binance exchange, consider adding this exchange to your Gunbot licenses. GBU is an authorized seller of Gunbot, so you can upgrade to the ALL Exchange license.

If you don’t own Gunbot, you probably should consider botting as a way to drastically improve your profits in crypto. GBU is an authorized seller, so what are you waiting for? Visit us in https://gunbotuniversity.com/shop .

GBU takes more than just bitcoin for payment — avoid the high fees by using Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, or DASH when you check out. We even take Paypal (manually) if you want to pay that way. We just need to add a little extra for processing, and it’s not on the website (yet), so just send a direct message to Professor CryptoWally in the Slack or use our feedback form if you want to use Paypal.

And sure enough – the coin did pump shortly after being listed on Binance today

This is Binance’s 100th coin to be listed… but there was no special fanfare. That was a bit unexpected. As listed, you will need to make trade volume of 0.002 or more, so be sure to set your minimums in gunbot appropriately.

More about RLC:

iExec aims to provide distributed applications running on the blockchain with scalable, secure and easy access to the services, data-sets and the computing resources they need. This technology relies on Ethereum smart contracts and allows building a Virtual Cloud infrastructure that provides high-performance computing services on demand.

iExec relies on XtremWeb-HEP, a mature, solid, and open-source Desktop Grid software which implements all the needed features: fault-tolerance, multi-applications, multi-users, hybrid public/private infrastructure, deployment of virtual images, data management, security and accountability, and many more.
The RLC tokens will be used to access the resources provided by the Market Network. It will be the unique way of payment for Application providers, Server providers and Data providers.

VIBE as a coin will probably go up in value for a little bit, after the initial “listing depression” and then get a major boost. If you’re not botting it already, add it to your Gunbot on your favorite exchange(s) wherever it’s supported (at time of this writing, this was HitBTC and EtherDelta, so Gunbot doesn’t run on those… so Binance is your only chance to bot this coin.)

If you already own Gunbot, but don’t have a license for Binance exchange, consider adding this exchange to your Gunbot licenses. GBU is an authorized seller of Gunbot, so you can upgrade to the ALL Exchange license.

If you don’t own Gunbot, you probably should consider botting as a way to drastically improve your profits in crypto. GBU is an authorized seller, so what are you waiting for? Visit us in https://gunbotuniversity.com/shop .

GBU takes more than just bitcoin for payment — avoid the high fees by using Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, or DASH when you check out. We even take Paypal (manually) if you want to pay that way. We just need to add a little extra for processing, and it’s not on the website (yet), so just send a direct message to Professor CryptoWally in the Slack or use our feedback form if you want to use Paypal.

And sure enough – the coin did pump shortly after being listed on VIBE today

coinmarketcap listing of VIBE at time of writing

More about VIBE:

VIBEHub is a technology platform with the capacity to create virtual reality
marketplaces and hubs, allowing users to buy and sell experiences far beyond
the possibilities of traditional technology.

All transactions on these hubs will use VIBE, an ERC20 token. What differentiates VIBEHub from traditional Virtual Reality applications is the ability to capture visual performances in Volumetric Video (Holoportation Technology). This will allow for a closer and more intimate interaction with artists, educators or instructors.

Big sea of red. You’re getting bags. Your “portfolio” on the exchange is dwindling. You might feel like panic selling. You’re seeing tweets of people selling and you’re wondering if you need to do the same.

I’ve got a suggestion.

I would submit to you that these big dips happen frequently. There are a few things that are worth repeating in times like these:

The masses are like a cat following a laser pointer on the carpet. The market falls down, so they fall with it and panic sell. They are praying to whatever gods will listen — PLEASE BUY MY COINS!!! The market goes up, so they say hey, let’s buy! No, no, No, NO! That’s the opposite. The experienced trader removes the emotion and BUYS when the market is down and SELLs when the profits are high.

This big sea of red is when I do my BUYING. This is why you keep Bitcoin in reserve. This is when all the sales happen! Everyone else is emotional, panicking, losing their shirts, and willing to give you their precious coins at a fire-sale-unheard-of-deal-price-of-a-lifetime!

But the money… it’s gone!

Yeah, I know. My portfolio is down by a huge amount, too… if I look at USD valuations, that is.

Here’s a drop in January 2018:

More recently, a 30% drop in 10 days

But if I look at the number of coins I have, it’s still the same number*.

Why is that important?

Well, I ask you to look at two things.

Look at the history of crypto

Look at what you think the future of crypto is.

First, if you look at the history of crypto, you’ll see that there are a lot of stairsteps where it went up, Up, UP, thendownalittle, then up, Up, UP thendownalittle, then repeated.

Second, look at what you think the future of crypto is. If you think we’re at the beginning stages and early days of crypto, then you needn’t worry. Your own instincts should tell you to HODL. The cycle will pass.

What Wally Does

Let me tell you how I see the current cycle.

Gunbot keeps making me more BTC. Every trade, I increase my Bitcoin position inch by inch. Every day, I go for as many trades as I possibly can. Every so often, the cycles repeat.

Try to keep emotion out of it, and try to remain calm during the storm. Marvel at those around you who are willing to sell their coins to your Gunbot or your manual trading. And if you have an extra account that can do some manual trading, get out there if you have the spare funds and answer their prayers.

How to do it?

One way I do this is I go to whatever exchange I feel like has the volume — and then I sort by coin loss. Then I look for long-term coins or coins that I might really have a decent bounce. For example, on Bittrex, I can go to Wallets or the list of all coins and then do a reverse sort on % Change. It’s definitely not a great metric since it’s a 24h metric, but if it’s all you have, and you don’t have Coinigy, Trading View, CoinTracking or something else, you use what you have.

Then I look for the ones with the dips that have recently slowed down.

I like UKG – this is a perfect time to pick some up!

If I feel like HODLing then I just leave it in my account, or I set some dream LIMIT SELL orders for high amounts — I make it so that people need to convince me to get rid of my coins.

If I feel like making money on these coins, I set a LIMIT SELL order for whatever percentage I think will spring back – 5%, 10%… because in this season of crypto – these feel like they will spring back.

Now, I have to caution you – I’m pretty cavalier with my attitude here because I’m currently playing with “house money”, since I’ve been so conservative in the past, and have been so cautious. I can let it ride some.

Next up – Steem Dollars (SBD) – that looks like an EXCELLENT buy!

I did the same with bundles of MANA, WINGS, VOX, STORJ and a few others.

We’ll see in a few hours, or tomorrow, or maybe next week if this was a good idea or not.

Summary

It can be a scary world out there, and there are real dangers. But the more you know about the world, the less scary it can be. If you’re prepared, you can be ready for the natural cycles of crypto ups and downs and better yet, you can capitalize and make the best of them.

Update

Even while writing and updating this article with pictures and editing paragraphs, the market is already re-correcting and some of the coins I bought are profiting. Bags are clearing. The sun is coming out.

I have a feeling that the people who panicked will wake up and regret their panic sell orders, and maybe we can help them understand how to stay calm for the next time. We don’t have to feed off each other.

And if we look back at coinmarketcap, we see a much different picture — out of the three number columns on the right — 1hr change, 24hr change and 7 day change, the 1hr change is mostly green now, indicating a major recent uptrend

NOTE: The author of this article is not a financial advisor and this does not constitute financial advice, even though it’s a little scary.

I said it was the same number, but I hope it’s clear that the statement doesn’t include trades, manual buys and sells, deposits, withdrawals, etc. In fact, because I’m a Gunbot user, overall I’m profiting and increasing my BTC because that’s what Gunbot does — it uses a BASE (BTC) to purchase a QUOTE (some other coin) and then later sells the QUOTE for more BASE. So, over time, if everything goes as planned, I have more BTC.

Whether or not the BTC itself is “worth” more FIAT is a different story, and whether or not that is a desirable trait is yet another story.

I recently came onboard to GBU as a Master student and Affiliate and love the world of cryptocurrencies. Not only can I learn about new ways of doing business and how a new financial sensation is sweeping over the whole world, but I can make money trading, using a trading bot, and also earn commissions referring people to buy their Gunbot license from GBU as well. I encourage anyone else look into becoming an affiliate of GBU if they like earning simple, no pressure referral fees.

I started to use a new telegram-based notifications bot called CryptoSight written by an active member of the gunbot community named Dante. This was a standalone bot that cost $200 by itself, but the Gunbot people bought it out and now it’s offered as a bundle with new pricing. You can talk to GBU professors about pricing, I’m sure.

The set up was pretty easy – I went to telegram and started a conversation with @gunthy_bot user (https://t.me/gunthy_bot), which offered me to Activate or Trial the service. Since I was a valid user, I could Activate (if you buy your CryptoSight from GBU, they will send you your key via your Online Order)

I went through the Activation process, which gave me a text file to put in my API keys. I was already told by my Professors that I should use new API keys and not re-use Gunbot API keys. Also, I was a little hesitant about sending keys and secrets in a text file to a cloud service, so I looked into it more. CryptoSight offers the ability to make trades via the telegram bot, plus it actually is reading trades in real-time. It needs to be able to interact with the Exchange, so that made sense. But I don’t want the ability, at least at this time, to make trades via the Telegram app, so I made my API keys read-only.

I edited the text file and uploaded it and in a couple of seconds, it reported my exchanges were linked. I’m using all three Exchanges and it let me know that for Bittrex, there was an extra step needed – I needed to upload my trade history. I guess Bittrex doesn’t give all the information CryptoSight needs automatically.

After doing all that, I get the main menu:

The help

When you click Help, you get a couple links to places where you can get additional information

However, the Homepage listed is no longer valid, as it just reports that CryptoSight has merged with Gunthy Bot (aka Gunbot). Also, the mention of @CryptosightBot must be the old version of the bot.

Trade Notifications

After playing around with the buttons for a while, I start getting trade notifications.

And this is why I’m really starting to like this add-on. There’s a thrill I get when I get a Telegram notification of a sell or a buy that Gunbot is making. Usually I just login later at night or look at graphs to see how things are going, but when I get notified that things are happening NOW… and then NOW.. and NOW. it might get old sometime, but this is heart-racing cool.

I don’t know yet why some of the notifications have profits listed and some don’t. I would assume that CryptoSight doesn’t have enough information – probably the purchase price. Maybe as it runs longer, it will get the prices.

Also, I’ve seen some screenshots somewhere where people are able to have it list dollars instead of bitcoin, but maybe that’s a different Telegram Bot. But I have to say my heart races just a little when I get to see results in this manner! It’s a nice alternate way to see the fruits of the Gunbot labor instead of just dots on a chart or lists in a spreadsheet.

One other note – Maybe CryptoSight is missing information, because I’m pretty sure I had more than one trade in the time between 12:40 and 3:50 … so I’m guessing the servers are overloaded, the exchange API’s are backed up, or maybe it just delivered the information to me late.

Checking the profits

After a while I noticed a few really neat ones:

Wow! almost 20% profit! I think maybe I should check to see if that’s correct.

I went over to Bittrex and took a look at the chart:

The chart definitely indicates it’s possible that at least 20% profit was had. I see two humps in this chart – maybe Gunbot took advantage of both of them.

I checked the trades on Bittrex site:

I’m not sure where CryptoSight’s 19.59% profit’s are coming from yet. First I check that the “Units total REP” in the BUY and SELL lines are the same, and that I’m not dealing with a multi-order buy or a multi-order sell, which would be more complicated to calculate (and I don’t know if CryptoSight supports).

When I compare the “actual rate” columns, I come up with 2.2% profit based on the rate. When I compare the Cost / Proceeds columns, which takes into account all fees, I come up with 1.69% profit, not 19.59%. This is a huge discrepancy, so I’ll need to ask someone about this.

Not too much later I saw that Gunbot running on Poloniex also caught profit on REP a little later:

Wow – REP is really moving, according to CryptoSight… maybe this is from that second hump I saw in the chart earlier?

I checked the trades on Poloniex’s website:

Hmm, here, this one is going to be more difficult, because I can immediately see that the amount of REP sold at 17:44:39 (2.29423719) is not the full amount bought at 17:36:17 (2.29998714). That means dust is being left over (probably 0.005 worth of REP) so it’s not done selling. But either Gunbot will get stuck, or will ignore based on MIN_VOLUME_TO_SELL or be tweaked otherwise to handle.

But it’s still close enough that I can manually calculate the profits on my own.

Doing the same comparison of rate (Price in the table), I see 3.4% profit. not the CryptoSite-report 13.13%. When looking at “Total (BTC) column, I calculate profit of that sale to be 0.00040012, not 0.00172016, which comes out to 3.15% profit. But again, this is way far away from 13.13% profit listed in the Telegram notification.

In general, the trade notifications are worth it, but the profit reporting seems to be way off. I wonder what CryptoSight does when Gunbot does microtrades in emotionless, or when there are several buy orders and several sell orders, all that add up to the same general order.

Or — how does Double Up affect the reporting?

Enhancement ideas

Aside from fixing the profit reporting, I think there are some improvements that could be made to make this even better.

Change Font Size and color based on Profit Gained

It would be really neat if there was a way to differentiate the influx of trade notifications that comes in all the time. It’s hard after a while to notice the small tiny trades from the mediums to the larger ones. So it’d be nice if losses were red, and the bigger the profit, the more prominent the notification.

I don’t know if Telegram supports font sizes, so if it doesn’t maybe some text markup with asterisks or ASCII art would work, such that trades 0-1% were in a category, 1-3%, 3-5% 5-10% 10-20%,20-40%,40-60%, etc such that different tiers were reported with increasing levels of fireworks.

Change Strategies or other Config items

This is definitely in the area of “Advanced botting” but it would be neat to be able to change my bot’s strategies remotely. I would want to control pairs, switch settings to move from aggressive to conservative based on market movements, and other things. But perhaps that is better handled in an actual GUI interface and not a Telegram app. Plus, this might give too much power to a 3rd party.

API Activations could be smoother

I know that being “first” is important and getting your product out there in today’s fast moving cryptocurrency world is high priority. If we all waited for gunbot to be bug free we probably never would have gotten it. So when I mention things that could be better, it’s not a complaint.

I think that activating API keys could be done interactively with the server. While I didn’t mind the text file that much, I think editing a file actually adds more complication to the end user, and adds more points where the user could have errors. I think that the Activate process could be something like “add exchange” and it asks for key, which user pastes in and then it asks for secret, which user pastes in, and then it’s done. User could copy/paste straight from other window w/exchange and not even use a text file.

Summary

It might take a long time for the novelty of getting trade notifications on Telegram to wear off, and in the future, I may want to have a more convenient way of doing an “instant sell” of certain pairs, which the bot supports.

I do hope the profit reporting is figured out, and there are some enhancements I can think of that would make it better.

GBULIVE Topics for this week: Double Up Q&A – Attendees choose GBU BACHELORS and MASTERS only. Do not share this link with anyone. Seats for GBULIVE are limited. Be sure to sign in with your GBU or Slack username for proper identification. Anyone on the web meeting that is not signed in with their GBU …

Many times, when the Bitcoin price goes UP, people rejoice because their portfolios go up (yay!), but they forget that it usually means that ALTCOINS *in relation to bitcoin* go DOWN, which means either Gunbot trades dwindle (reduce in frequency), or, worse, bags occur (gunbot purchases a coin at an “high price” and holds onto it for a long time, unable to sell at a profit.

And then, when Bitcoin price plummets, they cry about it. But then they make all these profits.

Such is the cryptocurrency see-saw.

Prices go up…

Bitcoin price goes up == people get happy because they’re richer, but sad because bags happen, or not so many trades.

Bitcoin price goes down == people get sad because they’re poorer, but happy because bags get removed, or more trades happen.

Prices go down.

It’s like they can’t make up their mind whether to be happy or not. Or put another way – some people? They can’t be happy no matter WHAT happens. They complain, and complain and complain.

From January 2017 to about October 2017, Bitcoin’s rise was volatile, sure, but not near as volatile as November and December 2017. The swings were epic. A $5000 swing in one day?!??!

This is why Gunbot University Professors recommend important safety measures ahead of time and know your exit strategies before you start botting, and before you dive headfirst into launching your bot with default configurations.

LISTEN. When things are good, you will be popping champagne and ordering new cars and pumping your fists in the air. But as soon as the bear market hits (and it will, several times over), you will be looking for everyone to blame – maybe Gunbot, or the Exchange, or who you bought Gunbot from, or who introduced you to CryptoCurrency… anyone but yourself. These tips will help keep you from losing some of your cool when the bad times hit.

Always keep dry powder

bags happen

Be ready for them. If you spent all your bitcoin on feeding gunbot, and gunbot ate your lunch because the price of gunbot shot towards the moon, and you were greedy and ran bullish settings on way too many coins, and gunbot ate up every coin in sight, and then you were thinking – hey, the market is doing great! look how good BITCOIN IS DOING!!!!!

And then you have all these bags. Because then you look at Poloniex or Bittrex and you see red all over the place. That’s because it’s red IN RELATION TO BITCOIN. A lot of people in this situation lose their cool and decide to sell off their altcoins to try and get bitcoin back. But if they just wait.. a lot of times, Bitcoin will fall again, or each coin will go through their individual rise cycle, and the bag may clear.

Which is why the “Dry powder” is keeping enough bitcoin aside to reload gunbot. The lesson here is – you don’t have to give Gunbot all your Bitcoin, all at once. Keep a lot of it in reserve. I, for example, only give Gunbot 7-10% of my Bitcoin to work with. I want to be able to replenish it when it runs out.

Bag Management

When bags happen (and they will, often!), you need a plan for what to do about them. It’s better that you figure this out ahead of time, and hopefully you’re starting out slow and with small amounts, so you can get a feel for what this is like with easy situations instead of hard situations.

The first thing you can do about bags is avoid them in the first place. Some settings are “bag avoidance” oriented. For example, if you have buy settings that are smarter, such as buying on Bollinger Band with “-5” or “-10” where it buys below the BB band, then it won’t buy often, but it’s a “smarter” buy. Also, if you have TSSL as a sell strategy, with a very fast trigger, such that you get rid of the coin quickly, but are able to ride the profit range, then you won’t collect as many bags.

There are five (5) main ways you can handle a bag:

Do nothing (wait it out)

Sell at a loss (confirm the loss)

WallyBag (move the bag)

Double Up (average down)

Reversal Trading (combines double up with sell at a loss)

Each of these choices has its own advantage and disadvantage in terms of how much investment of your time and other resources you have to make, and whether or not it fits with your own philosophies of trading.

1. Do nothing (wait it out)

If you do nothing, Gunbot won’t trade on that pair. It’ll patiently wait until it can sell the coin back for a profit. This requires the least investment of your time, other than you looking, staring at the red, and wondering when Gunbot is going to act, or wondering why you used those settings. You may invest some time fretting at this point.

Depending on how long you have a bag, doing nothing is usually what everyone does, and is what everyone should do. It depends on your level of patience. Gunbot needs time to work its magic on trades. Some trades only take a minute or two to turn around a percentage or two of profit (very rarely, I might add). Most trades take longer. If you’re holding a bag for longer than a few days, that’s when you might turn to the other options.

2. Sell at a loss (confirm the loss)

Some Gunbotters feel that it’s better to cut loose a coin as soon as it’s lost a certain amount of value – say, 5% or 10%. I have zero experience in this realm of thinking as it is anathema to my entire being. I do not ever sell at a loss. I believe we are early enough in crypto that enough coins are still surging, or I can use Averaging Down as an option, that selling at a loss does not work for me as a philosophy. But since there are enough people doing it, I wanted to mention it as an option, even though I cannot advise much about how it works or how to justify it.

Gunbot supports an option where if a coin loses a certain amount of value since it purchased it, it will sell it off. I think the idea is that it would be better for Gunbot to re-enter the market at a new price point after a certain amount of lost ground, and then re-farm that new price point over and over. That way they’re not sitting and waiting for the price to recover to the bought price, which may never happen.

While I can see the math part of that – taking a 5% loss now so that gunbot could then do ten or fifteen possible 1% profits later, the volatility of bitcoin, to me, paints too many worst case scenarios. I can see gunbot buying a coin, then bitcoin mooning so quickly that all the coins drop 5%, and gunbot sells them at a loss. Then gunbot re-buys when it recovers and then bitcoin moons again, repeating the process. I don’t see a stop-gap in place to prevent the continual bleeding of bitcoin when this is in place.

If I saw this presented on paper, or in a spreadsheet, or maybe with actual trades or a console log, maybe I could get behind it, but for now, I cannot support selling at a loss.

For me, the bottom line is — it’s not a loss until you sell.

3. Wallybag (move the bag)

Wallybagging was a term coined by another Professor early on (May 2017 timeframe) for a technique I used where I would move the bags that Gunbot created from time to time from one account to another account, either at the same exchange or another exchange. I would then set a limit sell order on the other exchange to either get the profit I wanted, or set “dream sells” to get higher profits, and then wait as long as it took.

This did two things

This freed up Gunbot immediately to move on with its job at the new price point

This built up a large portfolio that grew massively over time

Since crypto was and is still booming, this became an investment plan of sorts. I gained these crypto coins at a very cheap cost – and I ended up getting my bitcoin returns on most of them anyway. The ones that didn’t, I still usually got my USD returns. There were a few that I didn’t get any returns on, but the vast majority (90%) of coins received profits in this manner. All while keeping gunbot happy.

Now, because I moved the bag over to another account, I had to feed more bitcoin into the Gunbot account… which is why “Always keep dry powder” was important. Had I given all my bitcoin to gunbot in the first place, I wouldn’t have any left over to feed it.

This worked very well with Gunbot Versions 2.x and 3.x. With versions 7 and up, I haven’t yet performed extensive testing with Wallybagging since this version retrieves trade history of the coin(s) to get purchased price. Before using Wallybagging on version 7 or later, I’d verify first or wait for an article or two from me on it to make sure the procedure doesn’t make Gunbot sell at a loss or something due to coins being bought but not being sold in the trading history (due to being transferred out).

4. Double Up (average down)

Double-up, or Averaging Down, is another way to handle bags, and is one of the most effective, most profitable ways. However, the first thing that must be said is that it requires a large bankroll, and you must be willing to keep your trading limits lower than you normally might use.

Double up is not for everyone! Double up works like this – Gunbot buys a coin. If the coin behaves normally, fine. Everything works like it should. But if the coin starts to lose value and it becomes a nasty bag, then instead of the other three options (doing nothing, selling at a loss or moving it out of the way), Double Up option decides to invest MORE into the coin.

By investing MORE into the coin at a lower price, it lowers the average cost of the coin. A lower average cost of the coin means that the coin no longer has to recover all the way to the original bought price – it only has to recover some of the way.

If the coin continues to tank, then, depending on your settings, Gunbot will invest even more — DOUBLE what it did last time. It’s digging it’s way out.

This can get VERY expensive VERY quickly. You can specify the multiplier (100%, 150%, 200%) and a cap of how many times it will double up, but there’s a trade-off. If you make these too low to save money, you reduce the effectiveness of the solution and you may limit the capability of the Double Up feature to dig you out of the hole. Then the bag you have ends up being just really heavy and you have to wait for the coin to recover.

When you use Double Up, be sure to use a LOT of BTC (or funding currency) in your wallet and low trading_limits, and few coins. Try it out for a while before putting into place everywhere.

5. Reversal Trading

Like Double Up, this is a trading strategy that one must fully understand before it is employed. Reversal Trading was first made available in Gunbot v9.

Where Double Up keeps buying exponentially larger amounts at lower prices in order to reduce the Average Bought Price, in the hopes the coin will rise up and eventually sell for a profit, Reversal Trading sells the bag at a loss now, makes a note of it’s own actions, and then re-enters when the price has gone down a certain amount, reducing the Average Bought Price some. The hope is that the coin will recover enough to cover previous “sell at a loss” and take advantage of the lowered Average Bought Price.

Reversal Trading (RT) is an innovative technique that Gunbot uses to offer the user another option for holding bags, but it is not something to be used casually. There are several caveats when it comes to proper configuration, and expectations about managing a coin’s trades.

Summary

An old Gunbotter is teaching a new cryptocurrency newb about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the newb.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is greedy, arrogant, resentful, bullish, prideful, wants all the bitcoin and the altcoin for himself. When the bitcoin price goes up, he thinks the altcoin prices should go up too. And he thinks the party never ends. He’s full of ego. He thinks that calm seas are the same as evidence of a good sailor.”

He continued. “The other is good – he is calm and peaceful. He is humble and kind, knows the truth and enjoys balance. He rejoices when windfalls come and is prepared for when the inevitable famine times come. He invests in his own learning, and knows greed has a time and it’s when others are fearful. He knows to be fearful when others are greedy. The same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

The newb thought about it for a minute, recognized the fight within himself, having recently seen double-digit, triple digit and quadruple digit gains posted, and having recently dreamed of his own wins. “Which wolf will win?”